Phoenicia Floods

The old wives tale says that the winter won't come until the creeks are full and it looks like this year that prediction will be true. We have had a LOT of rain in the last couple of days. When I woke up this morning the Esopus was up over 18 feet at Coldbrook (flood stage is 13 feet). By sunrise the water had receded slightly and I ventured out to see how bad the situation was on the roads and in town.

Woodland Valley wasn't in bad shape. There was water over the road in several spots but the rain stopped just as it was about to get serious. The rebuild on Ed Twerdak's property seems to have held nicely. The WV stream had jumped the banks at the old ski slope but as I said before, the water receded in the nick of time.

Phoenicia flooded as the Stony Clove Creek jumped it's banks. It was obvious that water had come over the top of the Bridge St bridge but thank goodness that too had receded quickly. Town was still a bit of a mess this morning with water in several stores. The street also buckled in several places (see photos below). But Main St is open again and everything is slowly getting back to normal.

Here are some photos from about 8:00 am this morning of the flooding in Phoenicia.















































































The next few photos are from Woodland Valley Road. The first one is the Tonisgah bridge, the second is the curve down by the old ski slope, the next is the rebuild by Fawn Hill bridge and the last is the stream in front of Roxmor.

At this point the rain has stopped and everything is being cleaned up by various property owners and the Shandaken Highway Department. So everything seems to be returning to normal.